Palace Marquee

When they designed the new Palace Theater marquee, they didn’t fool around. In fact, they went back to the source, the old Palace Theater marquee. It was run by various companies through the years, including Radio Keith Orpheum (RKO) and Fabian, but the marquee remained the same for a long time.

That 1951 picture accompanied a Life Magazine article on how the movie industry was battling “T-V” by showing things such as live boxing matches. The cutline was “Crowds gather early for telecast at Fabian Palace Theater in Albany, N.Y., which seated 3,000 and turned away 3,000.” The battle between media was intense in those early days, as movies saw a precipitous drop in attendance as television spread throughout the land. “Last week NBC was at work on a plan to make its own movies from television shows and to release them in movie houses.” God help us, nothing has changed. But in the case of the marquee, that’s a good thing. (Because when it was changed, it looked like this.)